"She escaped?" Harlequin demanded; Skull just having informed the surviving members of their group about the failed assassination attempt on Jai Myche. "How could she have survived?"
"The how doesn't really matter, does it?" Skull replied. "She did and what's worse is that once she escaped, she tracked down the individual our agent impersonated and dragged her in front of the Patriarch to expose what had happened and how she thought it was done.
"They don't know for sure if an illusion was used, but there aren't many other possibilities that could explain how a switch was made. Qi signatures don't lie, and the agent's Qi signature was decidedly more powerful than the woman she impersonated.
"The Patriarch has ordered illusion breaking mandalas placed at the entrance of every Hall, every dining facility, and on each floor of Contribution Hall. Not only is that agent compromised, but everyone we have embedded in the Sect has been as well.
"The Patriarch forced everyone working with her on Sect business to be tested even before the mandalas were created, discovering a half dozen spies. Two of those spies were ours. We knew our people might be exposed, but Umbra has gone on a rampage to weed out the spies.
"Anyone using illusion has had to flee. That leaves us with no one of note within the Sect. At least no one in a position to gather pertinent information or tamper with mission allocation and resource distribution," Skull warned them.
"This girl, this Jay, has had the Heaven's own luck. She has almost single-handedly destroyed an operation that has been working without any noticeable problems for years," Butterfly pointed out. "It is beyond time to put an end to her interference."
"We tried that," Skull pointed out, "twice. And we are in worse shape now than ever."
"It might not matter, anyway. Our agents were able to find out that she was now classified as a roaming cultivator. As Butterfly pointed out, she was central to destroying what took us years to create, but I doubt her reclassification was done without purpose.
"Her elevation to Baron, and the selection of the territory and fief we operated out of, was too coincidental. The Patriarch cast her across the water as bait, and it worked. The girl is barely beyond the age of maturity, barely past surviving her first tribulation, and barely been ennobled.
"All of this within a year of awakening her Spirit Root, and she has become the fulcrum of change for everyone involved," Skull lamented.
"But this change in affiliation suggests a schism has formed between the Patriarch and her. Her actions will have rippling effects across our organization, but if she is a spent pawn, refusing to be utilized, her use to the Patriarch, and the Sect is over."
"Should we send someone to remove her, then?" Black asked.
"Is there any point?" Butterfly wondered. "Every time we've interacted with her, we've come out worse in the exchange. As I said, she has been blessed by the Heaven's themselves. How else can you explain her luck? How else could a Qi Gathering Realm cultivator manage to defeat a Nascent Soul Realm cultivator?"
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
"Because Black was an idiot," Harlequin interjected. "He was so sure of his abilities that he attacked a town guarded by a triad of spirits. And not just any spirits, major nature spirits."
"Then we just ignore her?" Black replied in disbelief.
"No, of course not," Harlequin answered. "But exposing ourselves, operating where we can be observed, is idiotic. We managed to keep the farming operation secret for years because we didn't make any big moves. We hid in the shadows. But some young chit that has barely taken the first step towards cultivation crosses our path and everything implodes?
"Why is that?" Harlequin demanded. "Because we've been too long on this island with no one to worry about, or anyone to threaten us.
"Those days are gone.
"And honestly, I'm not so sure that Four Element Sect didn't know what we were doing before they or the Patriarch arrived.
"There have been too many coincidences.
"Why would a new Baron select this section of the island for her Fief. There are areas where population density would make it easier for her to grow her holdings.
"The truth is, she was probably a pawn of the Patriarchs from the beginning. Encouraged to choose this area by her mentor if not the Patriarch herself. Everything she has accomplished has been a giant series of missteps and mistakes on our part.
"We knew the Sect was arriving and that at some point lands would be claimed and towns would come under scrutiny. And we still left a year's worth of cores and seedpods in warehouses on Lord Chon's dock.
"We left Lord Chon in power, knowing his excesses would be certain to garner attention. We all but painted a sign in that town telling the Sect that illicit goods could be found there, where to find them, and that a fumbling bunch of idiots were behind the operation," Harlequin said, almost spitting in fury.
"That's harsh," Butterfly rebuked.
"Is it?" Harlequin sneered. "You don't think what Crow did proves our idiocy. You don't think the failed assassination attempt by one of our own inside the Sect idiotic? An assassination attempt that exposed our methods for infiltration and rooted out our best people?
"We were idiots, too certain of our own talents to believe we could be caught or stopped.
"The only thing left to do now is to retreat to our secondary location. We have enough seedpods to start over, but we will lose everyone working inside the rift. There is no way to get them out without them being noticed and retained."
"It is going to take years to start over, and the Duke is not going to be happy about the loss of time," Black reminded the rest.
"It might be time to cut our losses. Black is right," Skull agreed. "The Duke is not going to be happy, and he is almost guaranteed to find a way to punish us."
"Punishment is better than the alternative," Black warned. "We have all given our Cultivator's Oath. There is no choice but to see this to the end. Or see our cultivation destroyed.
"I wouldn't give our chances of living a week with our cultivation realms shattered."
"Then we agree?" Butterfly asked. "We move our operation to the cave system in the mountains to the north and dig in. We spend the time to rebuild our operation quietly."
"Yes," Harlequin agreed, "and we do what we should have done here. We build a distribution system that makes use of multiple towns and paths."
"And we make sure the people we work with aren't the same type as Chon," Black added, closing the discussion and moving to set his part of the operations in motion. He had to find a new set of farmers able to propagate and tend the seedpods.
And he needed to make sure that the escape plan he had in place hadn't been compromised. There were other Empires across the world. Other places where he could start over.
And with the number of cores he had skimmed and saved over the years, he had the funds to set himself up somewhere rich in resources. As he considered that outcome, he glanced at the departing back of the other members, wondering who would be the first to cut and run.